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The legislation was triggered by a 60-Minutes television report that focused on stock trades in VISA by House minority leader Nancy Pelosiís husband Paul. Pelosi vigorously and credibly denied that she used her position to influence the trades.
Showing that she can be a master of spin, Pelosi managed to transform herself from the subject of an unflattering hit piece to champion of Congressional reform, first by confronting the 60-Minutes report and then by embracing the reform legislation, and blaming Republicans for trying to water it down.
The other irony is of course that Congress was never exempt from insider trading rules to begin with. Securities and Exchange Commission officials successfully persuaded Congress not to create a separate law for Congress, but to clarify the existing ban and speed up disclosures of stock trades. Currently members have to report annually, which makes insider-trading cases impossible to prove or even detect; the new legislation requires 30-day disclosure on a public and searchable web database. SEC officials said instant disclosure would be far preferable, but members objected to the paperwork burden.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear"

The legislation was triggered by a 60-Minutes television report that focused on stock trades in VISA by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul. Pelosi vigorously and credibly denied that she used her position to influence the trades.
Showing that she can be a master of spin, Pelosi managed to transform herself from the subject of an unflattering hit piece to champion of Congressional reform, first by confronting the 60-Minutes report and then by embracing the reform legislation, and blaming Republicans for trying to water it down.
The other irony is of course that Congress was never exempt from insider trading rules to begin with. Securities and Exchange Commission officials successfully persuaded Congress not to create a separate law for Congress, but to clarify the existing ban and speed up disclosures of stock trades. Currently members have to report annually, which makes insider-trading cases impossible to prove or even detect; the new legislation requires 30-day disclosure on a public and searchable web database. SEC officials said instant disclosure would be far preferable, but members objected to the paperwork burden.

Yes, this is very good news. I'm anxious to see that public/searchable online database. This is going to crimp their style. The better solution would be that any member of congress (and certain others) is required to have their assets managed from a blind trust, but this is definitely an improvement over once-a-year reporting.

"There is no law that says a congressman can't go into the cloakroom, hear some information that is about to have an important impact on a company and then, before it becomes public, go right to his stockbroker and trade," Ziobrowski said. "It is a tremendous temptation."

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear"